Spellbound (46 page)

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Authors: Blake Charlton

BOOK: Spellbound
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“Neither the hierophants nor the wizards have any sway over them. It will be safer than squatting behind some fisherman hut.”
He seemed to think about this and then nodded.
“All right, but we'll weight until dark. That why I can use the Chthonic spells.”
She looked up at the sky and bit her lip. There was maybe half an hour of light left.
“This creature-of-the-night habit of yours is going to put a dent in your social life.”
He put a hand to his forehead.
“Fran, you know I love how witty you are, but not now.”
“Fine, let's walk toward the infirmary.”
She paused.
“Do you have a headache?”
He gave her a wry look and pointed to the gash above his ear.
“Right, ask a dumb question …”
she replied but stepped closer. He didn't seem to have any confusion or trouble balancing. He stepped back and, with a slight frown, looked at her hand, which she had unknowingly raised as if to touch his head. She lowered her hand.
“The infermary is that way.”
He pointed and then set off.
The streets were still wet from the rain. The ground gave under Francesca's boots.
They seemed to be at the town's edge, and few people were about. The lycanthrope scare had sent everyone indoors. As they neared the town's center, she spotted a few souls darting from building to building.
“Why did the Walker go after Vivian?”
she asked.
Nicodemus had again put a hand to his head. He blinked a few times and then replied:
“I'm not sure. Back in the Greenwatter, he mentoined someone he called ‘the second.' I thought he ment the second dragon, but I'm guesing now he meant a second Imperail.”
She replied:
“We still don't know anything about the second dragon, do we? Vivian mentioned that Typhon seems to have fled the city.”
Nicodemus shut his eyes and then opened them wide.
“No, you hadn't mentoned that. But I'd bet he hasn't fled. I'd bet he's with the second draggin.”
Francesca couldn't help laughing.
“The second draggin? Well, your sister didn't knock the cacography out of you.”
He sighed.
“Dragin?”
“
Now you're just draggin-g it out,
” she sent back at him and smiled the way she knew would show her dimples.
“You had it right before. It's spelled ‘dragon.'”
He shook his head but still smiled. He was, however, blinking rapidly.
“Do you feel all right?”
she asked again.
“Other thn the hedake, I'm phine. Just exhosted.”
She frowned at this last word; his spelling seemed to be getting even worse … if that was possible.
They continued on, crossing two more streets and passing a woman and boy who were hurrying in the opposite direction. Ahead ran the central street. Red and yellow light flickered from an unseen fire.
She gestured toward a side street. Nicodemus stepped into it and squatted against the wall. She stood for a while longer and watched the foot traffic. No one seemed rushed.
“What should we do when we escape Coldlock, find Shannon?”
She wrote and turned to cast to Nicodemus, but to her shock he was leaning against the wall and vomiting.
“God-of-gods!” she swore and ran to him.
“Nicodemus, what's the matter?”
He looked at the sentence but then doubled over again. He was too incapacitated to translate.
“Nicodemus,” she said while casting a cloud of flamefly paragraphs above his head. “Look at me.”
He turned toward her but then slipped, started to fall. He put his hand to the wall to catch himself. Francesca took a step closer. His legs buckled and he fell.
Acting quickly, Francesca wrapped her hands in the wool blanket. She wiped the vomit from his mouth and made sure his airway was clear. Then she pushed his head back so the light from the flameflies shone in his eyes.
“God-of-gods!” she hissed. His left pupil was dilated to a wide black disk, his right contracted to a small circle. Often that was a sign of something pressing on the left side of the brain.
She manipulated the blanket so that the first two fingers of each of her hands lay in his palms. “Squeeze my fingers,” she said in what she hoped was a clear voice. “As hard as you can, squeeze them both.”
His left hand clamped down on her fingers, but his right barely produced pressure.
Most likely something was pressing against the left side of Nicodemus's brain, causing his left pupil and the right arm to weaken.
“Nicodemus,” she said while using the blanket to turn his head to one side, “we're going to the infirmary now!”
Vivian had struck him on the temporal bone, the weakest point in the skull. An artery that supplied the skull with blood ran just under that bone. If Vivian had fractured the bone and lacerated that artery, Nicodemus would have bled into his skull.
The blow had initially knocked him senseless, but he had recovered from the concussion. But then the blood had built up enough pressure to compress his brain. That's why he had been lucid for so long but was just now flagging.
“Stand up!” she commanded. “Stand.”
He had precious little time before the pressure in his head would induce a coma. A short while after that, he would stop breathing.
She hoisted him to his feet, and, using the blanket to protect herself, draped his weak right arm over her shoulders. She half-dragged him toward the infirmary.
She had performed the necessary operation only once before. Seven years ago in Port Mercy, but then she had had the assistance of more experienced clerics. And back then she had been able to use her whole repertoire of Numinous and Magnus spells. Now any text she applied to Nicodemus's body would misspell.
But unless she relieved the pressure in his skull in the next half hour, he would surely die.
 
FRANCESCA DRAGGED NICODEMUS into the empty solarium and pulled him on top of the table. After a few deep breaths she filled the dark room with flamefly paragraphs.
Below her, the infirmary was in chaos. The Savanna Walker had left several men unconscious, two blind, and one raving mad. The infirmary's few clerics and apprentices were frantically trying to manage the crisis. Francesca had been worried they would try to stop her. In fact, she had trouble getting anyone to notice her at all.
At last she'd been able to textually communicate with a young physician. He had had no trouble believing the present crisis had robbed her of hearing. When asked for the use of a solarium, he'd told her to take any one she liked but not to expect assistance.
Now she used the blanket to haul Nicodemus's legs onto the table and push him onto his right side. He was still breathing on his own. But he moved his limbs and opened his eyes only when she pinched his fingertips. He no longer responded to her voice. His brain was being jammed into the bottom of his skull. If she didn't act fast, it was going to stay there forever.
Just then the door opened and the physician she had corresponded with came into the room. He set a tray down next to the table and removed its cloth to reveal a row of metal instruments. The physician hurried out of the room.
Clerics were required to gain fundamental skills with mundane medical implements, but they used them only when their spells would not suffice. Having mastery of Magnus, Francesca had not used a scalpel since she had been an apprentice. Now she looked at the set of gleaming steel with trepidation.
The other physician returned with two buckets of water. He placed one on the washstand and the other beside the table. He cast a sentence of faint green runes. She translated the common language message into
“I must go back down to the main hall. You're on your own.”
Francesca thanked the young man and watched him leave. Then she looked down at Nicodemus. Only a few days earlier she had looked down on Deirdre.
Francesca closed her eyes and let swirling doubt fill her. But then she took a long breath and leapt into the safety of action.
She slipped her arms out of their sleeves and went to the washstand. After dipping her arms down to the elbow in the water, she cast a flood of tiny white runes in a common magical language. Then she scrubbed every inch of her hands and forearms before washing them in the other bucket. Once they were dry, she returned to the table. Though her hands were clean, she would have to do her best not to touch her patient for her own safety.
So she picked up a scalpel and extended the existing laceration on the left side of Nicodemus's face toward the back of his head, encountering some refreshed bleeding along the way. She clamped forceps to both skin flaps and lay each away from the incision to keep her operating field clear. Using the blunt edge of the scalpel she scraped the skull's outer membrane off the bone and then picked up the hand drill.
She paused, took another breath. The doubt flooded through her once again. She fought it down.
The drill tip caught the bone. She turned the crank and felt it grind against the skull's hard outer layer. After a few minutes the grinding ceased, and with every turn she felt as if the drill were being pulled down into the head; she'd reached the soft middle layer of bone. She'd known this would come but still found it alarming. Twice she stopped and withdrew the bit. Nothing that looked like brains was stuck to the metal so she knew she hadn't gone too far. At last the drill began to grind again, indicating she'd reached the innermost, harder layer of bone.
Every two turns she withdrew the bit and looked inside. After finding a clean swab on the tray, she dabbed at the hole.
Two turns of the drill. Nothing. Two more turns. Dab. Nothing. Three more turns. Nothing. Two more turns. Dab. Nothing. Two more turns. Dab.
A drop of dark blood welled up from the bone.
She put the drill back on the tray and picked up a blunt probe and a scraping probe. With the blunt, she poked the growing blood drop and felt the firm bone beneath. She pushed harder, felt it chip. A dark rivulet ran down from skull to skin flap.
Encouraged, she used the scraping probe to reach into the opening and chip fragments of the bone out and down.
Each new advance brought another dark trickle. The total volume of blood was not great, maybe a quarter of a cup. But even a small volume expansion in the skull could compress the brain into dysfunction.
Nicodemus was now breathing at a normal rate and more deeply. “Nico, can you hear me?” she asked and discovered that she was breathing easier too. “Nico, don't move.”
His legs twitched and his mouth moved.
“Don't move, Nico,” she said and then laughed. “You're going to be okay.” She laughed again and then shivered. She blinked to make sure she wouldn't cry. He was safe. She'd done it. She'd saved him. Elation flushed through her.
This is what it felt like to be a master physician. This was all she'd ever wanted to be.
Nicodemus lifted his right hand. “Don't move,” she said again. He put his hand back down. “You'll be fine.”
She inspected the hole and noticed a wafer of bone remained on the lower half. She reached in with the scraping probe and broke the chip out.
Suddenly the drilling hole filled with bright red blood.
Fear shot through her. Bright red blood meant a bleed from an artery. Either pulling out the last bone chip had lacerated a vessel below the point of fracture or the decreased pressure within the skull had allowed an unclosed artery to bleed. The blood filled up the view of the incision and then began to run down the side of Nicodemus's face.
She panicked.
She had to stop the bleed, but how? She looked around but saw nothing useful. Normally she would have extemporized a spell to find and tie off the bleeding artery. Barring that, she would have simply inserted her finger into the wound to clamp off the flow. She could not do that here without contracting a lethal canker curse. The blood continued to run. Its flow surged and ebbed in time with his heartbeat.
Her own heart kicked furiously. But she no longer felt as if she were herself; she felt as if she were a spirit floating a few feet above her head and staring down through the eyes of a panicking woman. She was going to kill another patient.
And from this point of elevated detachment, a choice shone clearly before her. Compress the bleeding artery or don't. Save the patient or herself.
She looked down.
Compress the bleeding artery or don't.
His eyes were still closed and his expression was blank, almost peaceful.
Compress the bleeding artery or don't.

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